I think BG1 is a very good game and I love the plot. Not everyone does, but if you like open-world adventures with an interesting backstory, you'll like it. The plot slowly reveals itself to you and you have interesting world with various quests that I feel are more interesting than the usual quests you get in RPGs.

Don't forget that BG1 uses the 2ed rules, so you have no feats and skills to allocate skills points into, so in a way it is much, much more easier for the beginner or those who don't like the 'complexity'. During level up all you do is just select a new weapon proficiency if you've gained it or new spells, but that's it. You only spend time creating your character and from then on you don't do anything with it, unless you decide to multi-class (which in BG1 wasn't really much encouraged). You don't have any special attacks like parry or cleave, just the normal ones and spells (and any wands/potions/scrolls you've gained), so the combat feels like any other regular RPG with the exception of memorized spells. So if you dislike of DnD stems from the third edition, the plethora of feats and skills and so many options, you can go and play this one without any problems.

It also doesn't end with a cliff-hanger so you don't have to play BG2 which I heard is a bit more railroaded and doesn't let you go anywhere you want like in BG1 but has a different combat engine (and includes prestige classes).
Besides, Baldur's Gate is generally acclaimed and thought to be one of the best RPGs, so whether the game sometimes has bad pathing or not doesn't matter at all, just like older games aren't thought to be bad because of one or two problems they used to have. Neverwinter Nights is thought to be a pretty good game, came out later and has even worse pathfinding. BG on the other hand except for the occasional hiccups has a very good pathfinding system and it doesn't impact the quality of the game at all.

I'd advise against it based on what I can gather of your preferences from your posts. Story is definitely a big component of BG, but it's nowhere near as moving or thought provoking as Planescape, not helped by the fact that you can't talk to party members in BG1 (or in BG2, unless the game decides that you can). The core game mechanics in Planescape were altered slightly to make it more newbie-friendly, but the fights in BG are significantly more difficult if you don't have some degree of familiarity with the system. I never played BG2 all the way through, but from what I can gather, the same seems to go for it with regards to combat (if you don't know how to buff and debuff properly, the wizard fights will wipe the floor with you).

I get what you're talking about, though. I recently got into Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, which people told me is on par with Plansecape's story, but I've had a hard time getting into because my lack of knowledge about 3.5 is making progressing through the story a real chore. But asking for more information about a game before deciding to buy it isn't for the purpose of deciding whether or not to like it, but rather to decide if it's worth spending money on it to begin making that determination. I concur that reading a review and automatically agreeing with its conclusion without having played or otherwise actually been exposed to the game is more than a bit daft, but that's not what OP is even remotely trying to do.

That's not terribly helpful to OP. Just saying that the game is good because you think it is doesn't help OP in any way decide if the game is one that they are likely to enjoy,thereby justifying spending money on it. Pointing out that games like NWN also have bad pathfinding doesn't say anything about BG that I can determine; whether or not the pathfinding is bad in those games, the fact that the pathfinding becomes exceptionally buggy and suicidal in the many tight places that BG's story makes you go through makes needless party deaths more likely, which can impact one's determination of the quality of the game.

But you are missing my point... again. Asking for an opinion, or reading a review, will not give you anything other than somebody else's preference. Not yours, somebody else's. Opinions and reviews are for onlookers and readers. People who want to experience for themselves do so -- in the case of games, they buy it and try it. They don't seek the approval of others first. Agreeing with a conclusion or not is completely beside the point. It will not change (or should not change) your opinion. If it does, that speaks volumes.

I wasn't replying to the OP.

Which is why good reviews are the ones that mention specific things that the game contains or lacks that either appeals to or repulses the reviewer's preference. In mentioning such things, the reader is alerted to their existence and provided with more data about the game in order to make a determination as to whether they are likely to like it before buying it, as opposed to sinking money on an uniformed gamble. In other words, it's not the conclusion of the individual that informs their judgement of whether or not the game in question is one they are likely to enjoy, but the underlying premises and examples that support that conclusion that do so.

All well and good in theory, but in practice good reviews are extremely rare, especially in game forums!

They may be rare, but that's no reason not to attempt to provide data of that kind, especially on a direct request.

Sure it is, when you believe that second hand knowledge about what makes a game good or bad is not worth squat.

[Grammar edit.]

I thought that we were talking about the rarity of things like good reviews which actually were helpful. If you are asserting that such things do not exist and are not merely rare, then I heartily disagree. Learning more about a game prior to purchase by reading reviews, making inquiries of people who have played it, and watching Let's Plays doesn't equate to having played it, but it can expose some problems that the player might have with the game that they would otherwise only find out about after having wasted their money for something that turns out they don't like.

Take Neverwinter Nights 2, for instance. It was one of the games I bought in a transaction solely on the basis of a friend saying that it was good (the rest of that purchase included NWN 1, ToEE, and the entirety of the BG and IWD series); I bought it without probing for more detail or looking for more detail, likely thinking that the extremely low price of the sale would help it all balance out if there were one or two games I didn't care for. I initially was enjoying being able to talk to my companions and looked forward to being able to help them with their various arcs, and that kept me playing despite the problematic AI and puppet mode problems, at least until school cut back on my free time. I did want to keep experiencing the game, so I read the Something Awful LP, which was a blast... until I found out that my attempts to talk some sense into Khelgar Ironfist about life as a Monk not being what he thought it was (1) had no effect on his arc, and (2) was losing me hidden influence points every time I did it. The lack of transparency about the influence system and the fact that companion conversations often required high influence made frustrated my attempts to try to roleplay interactions with the group, and my inability to have any impact on the characters' personal arcs made me lose any sense of investment I had in my relationship with them.

My point being, these are all things that I could have discovered by doing something as simple as watching/reading the first few bits of an LP, reading a review, or asking people in more detail what they thought about the game with regards to the things I prioritize in a game (i.e. "How is the party interaction? Can I interact with them in a meaningful way? Can I help them develop and grow?"). I didn't, and as a result I wasted my money on a campaign that I can't enjoy. Mind, it's not a total loss since I also have access to MotB, but even that has its issues that even the most cursory of investigations would have revealed.

It's not that these resources didn't exist, it's that I didn't look for them at the right time. OP is trying to make use of one of those resources prior to spending money so as to reduce the probability of finding out after the fact that the game they bought is something they don't like.

See, that's where we will never agree. I absolutely fail to see how asking somebody else for an opinion will *ever* colour, one way or another, my actual enjoyment of a game. I don't see things like that. If I like the look of a game, be it from and advert or whatever, I will never, ever spoil my first impression of it by asking somebody else, especially complete strangers, whether *they* like it. My best friend has recommended games to me that I have absolutely hated. The same friend has derided games that I adore. That is a person that knows me and my tastes. I do not take anybody else's view into account. I buy the game and try it. If I don't like it, I either stow it and try again later, or simply chalk it down to experience. Argue for reviews all you like, but it will never change my attitude to them. A review is another person's opinion, and that person's opinion doesn't factor into my enjoyment, or not, of games.

It won't. What it will do is help one to determine, prior to purchase, if one is likely to like it. That's it. I didn't do any digging on buying a game, and I only found out after purchasing it that it had something in it that made the game unfun for me. Had I done research on the game beforehand, I could have detected it earlier and avoided it if I determined it to be a deal breaker. In conducting research on games I plan to buy, I detect things like that in advance and am better able to determine if the game will be fun or not.

Perhaps the problem is in the example I used. In the example I gave, the LP revealed something about the game design early on that I would have found about about had I kept playing and gotten surprised by finding out that I had actually been getting screwed over by the influence system. It wasn't my intent to insinuate that but for the LP I wouldn't have reacted the way I did, since after some failed influence checks and notations of influence loss in the chat history that didn't immediately get buried I would have caught on.

To make my point plainer and avoid confusing the issue as I seem to have done with my earlier example, look at Baldur's Gate. That was a game I played totally blind and only afterward discovered that it and I don't get along very well. Had I done any research on the game and determined that it was primarily a combat-oriented game with party members I couldn't talk to set in a setting that embodies all things about Tolkein-esque fantasy that personally chafes me, I could have avoided it. The fact that the reviews I would be pulling this information from would be irrelevant; they might have liked the game, but the stuff that actually matters is the reasons they gave for liking it, which for the most part I would have identified as reasons I would not like it. I could have relied on ads, but given that those things are designed to sell the game and not provide a purely objective depiction of the game to help a consumer decide if the game is something they will enjoy, I would actively be better off buying completely blind.

To bring this all around to the topic at hand, OP wants to know if the story of BG is worth the various problems he seems to have with D&D. We have tried to give reasons for we think it is or isn't as requested. Hopefully, the data provided will be helpful in OP making their determination.

You're asking a difficult question. I guess it depends a lot on what it is you *don't* like about DnD. Is it some aspect of the ruleset? Because BG adheres pretty strictly to the rules. Is it the fiction? Because BG is pretty standard DnD fiction with all the usual classes monsters and standard swords n' sorcery setting.

Planescape neither reads nor plays remotely like BG. Planescape has a much more involved, highly interactive narrative and better developed characters. It ditches the class-based ruleset that BG adheres strongly to and features much weaker simplified combat. In BG tactical combat is like 90% of the experience.

So if Planescape Torment is a breath of fresh air for you then I'm going to have to assume that BG is too much standard DnD fare for your liking.

Then again, try it. You might like it.

Actually, it does have the same ruleset; fighers whomp on things, thieves get access to the same thief skills, and mages and clerics cast spells on a Vancian system. The biggest differences mechanics-wise are (1) some characters get special abilities they can use at will which are unique to the game, (2) the selection of spells is pared down from the standard D&D list and features a few new damage spells, (3) TNO gains ability points as he levels, and (4) TNO starts as a fighter and has to find a trainer to switch classes. The only reason the combat feels so "weak" in PST as compared to BG is because the base difficulty of the encounters tends to be a little on the low side for most of the time, and the slider already starts at a lower difficulty.

If I had to make a guess, his comments about "having very little interest in the lore surrounding [D&D]" and about how he gathers that "these games focus more on the system and the world surrounding D&D", I think you're pretty firm on the mark. BG's base story is standard fare for D&D, and it does require investing a lot of time in trying to master the system in order to create a strong character and party; PST is constantly throwing new points at you to the point where you're never in too much danger of screwing yourself over, and the limited number of companions have enough variety in their skill set to practically guarantee a balanced party. If that's the source of OP's concerns, I second your assessment.

Speaking of literature, if you only want to know the story you can pick up the novel for a penny over the price of shipping on Amazon.